I wrote this to make sense of a year (or two) that disappeared. Grief fractures time, identity, and certainty - and life still insists on being lived. If this feels familiar, I hope it offers a little company. Read gently. Today I asked Jon how long Jared had been Director of NBCCD. “A year?” he said. That’s how it felt. That’s what I had thought. Until I did the math. It had been two years. It was December 2023. I had been tired. Burnt out. I had led a college through COVID